Poet, novelist, and professor Al Young served as California Poet Laureate from 2005-2008. Young often read to musical accompaniment, and his poetry reflected his interest in music, specifically jazz and blues, as well as his life in California. His collections of poetry include Dancing: Poems (1969), The Blues Don’t Change: New and Selected Poems (1982), Heaven: Collected Poems 1956–1990 (1992), The Sound of…
Carol Muske-Dukes is a professor at the University of Southern California and a former Poet Laureate of California. She is an author of 9 books of poems – most recent is Blue Rose, which is a 2019 Pulitzer Prize short-list finalist. Earlier books of poems include Twin Cities (2011), Sparrow (2003), from Random House, a…
Herrera served as California Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. As the state poet laureate, Herrera created the i-Promise Joanna Project, an anti-bullying poetry project. Joanna was an elementary school girl who was bullied and killed in an after school fight in Long Beach. The first half asks students to send in poems about experiences and effects…
Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and writer. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia was born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican descent. The first person in his family to attend college, he received a B.A. and M.B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. from Harvard in Comparative Literature. For…